Con­tainer traf­fic via rail

Philip Cross­land is, of course, cor­rect in ques­tion­ing why more con­tainer traf­fic is not sent via rail via the un­der­utilised over­head rail track, which cir­cles the city right into the docks.

For many years, and on many oc­ca­sions, in this col­umn I have cham­pi­oned the ex-leader of the coun­cil, Pat Doyles’s, idea to utilise the over­head rail line, which has no road cross­ings what­so­ever cir­cling the city from the main line at ap­prox­i­mately Dairycoates to the docks.

This line is dra­mat­i­cally un­der­used and should have had in­vest­ment many years ago, like New­cas­tle (al­most 40 years ago) and other ci­ties have had to pro­duce metro pas­sen­ger and freight lines with­out any dis­rup­tion to the road net­work what­so­ever.

There could and should be reg­u­lar small tram type trains stop­ping at small tram stops at ev­ery ma­jor road bridge like other ci­ties.

Freight and pas­sen­ger move­ments could be pro­grammed to use off peak times for freight and a trans­fer main line sta­tion could be built at Daiy­coates.

A small su­per­tram link into the city cen­tre would then trans­fer peo­ple who want to come into the city cen­tre removing level cross­ings and even ex­pen­sive-to-main­tain fly­overs and bridges, free­ing up vast tracts of land to help pay for the project.

It would also dra­mat­i­cally re­duce pedes­trian need to catch buses and taxis etc in the city cen­tre to go straight out.

It would do this by link­ing with buses at the small ar­te­rial road sta­tions in­stead of clog­ging up the town. The other ob­vi­ous thing it would do would be to cre­ate a di­rect line to and from the fer­ries.

The city will never be able to con­struct an un­der­ground like many other ci­ties as ge­o­log­i­cal con­di­tions would make that cost pro­hib­i­tive. Whether we have elec­tric driver­less cars or what­ever peo­ple will al­ways use the roads whether we like it or not un­less we give them ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive trans­port ser­vices.

It is point­less con­tin­u­ously try­ing to fill shop­ping spa­ces with other shops and vy­ing to get peo­ple into the city cen­tre so we may as well try to make trans­port eas­ier.

Be­ing the poor re­la­tion, ig­nored or for­got­ten out on a wing North­ern Pow­er­house re­la­tion (who ac­tu­ally does input the power) it will never hap­pen. Noth­ing will hap­pen un­til we ac­tu­ally al­most per­ma­nently achieve the al­most to­tal grid­lock we see on a more reg­u­lar ba­sis ev­ery time there is a road in­ci­dent al­most any­where in the city. Frank Mc­conaghy.